


put your blood on ice

by SashaSea (SHCombatalade)



Series: high up in the hills of california [3]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teen Wolf (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Companion Piece, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22674319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SHCombatalade/pseuds/SashaSea
Summary: Mornings turn to nights turn to months, and each day Andrew wakes up furious at the world that has torn so much from him and left nothing behind to bleed out, he tells himself that he will finally check his voicemail.(the aftermath of Neil's call)
Series: high up in the hills of california [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1416817
Comments: 6
Kudos: 100





	put your blood on ice

**Author's Note:**

> companion piece/missing scene: takes place directly after the end of chapter two of "you looked at death in a tarot card"

The texts start to pour in before he's even left the dorms at Chico and intensify over the reheated pot of last night's desperation, and don’t stop by lunchtime, which is also when Neil should have arrived.

The fact that there’s no word doesn’t frighten him - he hadn’t been frightened, not last night, not when the strangled cry at the edge of his hearing had revealed a familiar too-blue eye and the bitter burn of blood in against his nostrils. He hadn’t been frightened during any one of the forty-two miles between the snarl that stopped the breath in his throat and the shaky one that released when he’d opened that window and seen the familiar tousled head buried beneath the sheets. He hadn’t been frightened through the entire ordeal; he’d been furious.

Andrew hasn’t been frightened since the night of the fire, but _oh_. He’s been furious.

On the morning after the second night he failed to die, Andrew had woken up furious; he hadn’t stopped since. There’d been a therapist, after the fire. Erik had insisted, and Andrew - Andrew had gone because it hurt a hell of a lot less to carve his sadness out from the valleys between his veins than it had to carry the names of those he’d lost carved into the hollows of his ribs. Somewhere in between the play of red and blue flashing across the tortured remains of his childhood and the heavy coat the deputy had draped across his shoulders, Andrew had learned a valuable lesson: that families and feelings were weaknesses that only left you dead and buried in the dirt.

He’d been furious, every mile of the road, and doubly so when he all but broke his knuckles softening them to the curve of Neil’s face; fury and fire only kept you safe until they burnt out, until all they left you with was a charred heart in the forest and someone to rebuild it for.

Fury feels too much like fright in the tick tick tick of the clock on the wall, in the humm humm humm of the phone on the counter - Andrew is _tired_ , of fury and feelings and phones.

He shoots a quick _ETA?_ to Neil, and he hides himself under the scalding shower spray that reminds him of what happens when he lets himself be afraid.

* * *

Ten minutes later he’s scoured himself calm and the kitchen is quiet.

There's no solace to be found in the stillness of the woods, not today.

His phone sits like a shrine on the counter, screen alight with the sheer volume of notifications that splash across the screen: one-hundred-thirty-seven texts, the green bubble spits and starts, and eleven missed calls. He doesn't carry the names of his pack etched into his person but his phone, Jean and Robin and Erik and Kevin and Wymack and Allison and Katelyn and _Abby_. And there, right at the end of it all, at the precipice of a flat earth he never found the evidence to believe in, one name that jumps out like a sharp edge and a sudden drop.

One missed call: Neil.

Voicemail.

Fury is the comforting white noise that overtakes the hollow echo in his ears, the one that sounds like something found and finally lost. Fury because he **knows** what that voicemail says - not exactly, not word for word, but he knows in the way that he knows if there's a voicemail and no further texts, for everyone else to be trying to reach him, for the kitchen that feels too large and too jagged around him.

He **knows** it's a goodbye.

He knows it's a goodbye the same way he knows that maybe he could have changed it if only he'd answered the phone, and also the same way he knows that he couldn't have. Somewhere in the wet ash and clearing smoke of his smoldering family home, Andrew learned the most valuable lesson of all: that love and fire are one and the same - they keep you warm until they burn you up inside.

He knows it's a goodbye the same way he knows what every single other of those unread text messages will say, and the three that chime in rapid succession as he watches, frozen. Knows the same way he knows he can't thumb his way into reading them, because he knows more than anything that if he closes his eyes there won't be a third morning.

Robin's name flashes a warning across his screen as the call tries to connect, but he can't find the coordination to answer. There's a sudden canyon between his brain and his body, somewhere right around where his heart should be, and he feels the way her name disappears into it. One missed call: Neil. Voicemail. And there is a rabbit hole that surely leads to madness, if only he convinces his feet to fall. It's maybe a little bit his fault and a whole lot not, but it hurts a hell of a lot less to rip himself apart at the seams of his guilt than it does to listen.

* * *

On the morning after the third night he failed to die but the first where he hopes he might, Andrew doesn't listen to the message.

What does it matter? He already knows Neil is gone.

* * *

Mornings turn to nights turn to months, and each day Andrew wakes up furious at the world that has torn so much from him and left nothing behind to bleed out, he tells himself that he will finally check his voicemail.

The words, he knows like he knows goodbyes - knows grief, knows the wrung out feeling in his bones that burns when he tries to catch a breath, knows the hollowness in his chest that used to be a heart, knows the severed limb feeling in his life that used to be belonging, be _home_ \- are lies. Maybe it will tell him that he is alive, or maybe it tells him that he's dead, and maybe the message will tell him that he's sorry about all of it, but it won't change anything in the end.

It won't change the fact that there's a red bubble of an aneurysm at the corner of his phone, a warning of an answer and a promise of more questions left behind.

It won't change the fact that it's been just under ten months now and he doesn't forget what Neil's voice sounds like, he **can't** , not with his memory, but he forgets how Neil's voice made him feel a little bit less angry and a whole lot more _alive_.

It won't change the fact that a year comes and goes like the passing of a third morning, and Andrew never checks the message.

What does it matter?

It’s still just a few seconds, and Neil is still gone.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] put your blood on ice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24265597) by [Flowerparrish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish)




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